Why Didn't Pharah's Ult Get Reworked?

General Discussion
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With the Season 9 update, basically all of Pharah’s kit got reworked. The only thing that didn’t get touched? Her ultimate.

If anything, this was the part of her kit that needed a rework the most! Pharah is the only hero except for Tracer who can be damaged by their own ultimate, and unlike Tracer: she gets locked into place!

Why is it that one of the most mobile characters has an ultimate that forces her to be stationary? It goes against the theme of her character, and directly counteracts the intention of the rework which focused on increasing her maneuverability. Additionally, she has the only stationary ult that requires her to be in enemy line of sight!! Both Junkrat and Bastion have ultimates that lock them in place; however they are allowed to hide themselves and target enemies from across the map. Ironically enough, while both of them have “explosive” ults that are intended to land far away, they don’t even take any damage if it hits their location!

And -almost to add insult to injury- after the Season 9 global health increase, her ultimate’s time to kill has gone up! Even before, the enemy team often had the time to react and damage Pharah before dying to her ultimate. But now, that time has gone up to the point where she really can only reliably secure kills on unsuspecting solo enemies or enemies that are directly on top of each other. If she ults next to two separated enemies, she will be eliminated by the second one more often than not.

To be honest, I don’t know what her ultimate should be. Perhaps she could become “supercharged” like Genji, Sojourn, and Mercy do and receive buffed/unlimited flight along with a modified primary fire. Maybe she could send out an airstrike missile that acts like some combination of Junkrat and Bastion’s ultimates. Or maybe it could be something completely new!

Regardless, Pharah’s Barrage is one of the few ultimate abilities that has gone virtually unchanged* since the release of Overwatch 1, and it no longer fits with the game or her character.

*Note: The only changes to Pharah’s ultimate since 2016 have been a 0.5 second reduction in duration and QOL improvements such as reloading her ammo and refreshing her hover jets.

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  1. precisely because she’s already mobile the rest of the time
  2. because it’s an incredibly powerful ultimate, and would be way too powerful if she could also move

Cassidy has pretty much a stationary ult, that also requires him to be in LOS of the enemy, and it’s not an instant ultimate, it has a charge time.

  1. Junkrat’s tire can be destroyed, negating it completely.
  2. Bastion’s ult is much easier to avoid than Pharah’s, because it has a delay between the appearance of the lines and the damage itself.

She’s also a flying character that is not really supposed to use her ult in a small room…

Reworking it is very possible. I completely understand that being a sitting duck is not great, and that Pharah often gets killed during her ult. But unlimited flight would go against what the devs tried to do (ie, ground her a little more than before). And she already has an “airstrike” type ult. If she could launch it while being in cover, then it would have to have a delay, like Bastion’s, or a projectile that could be destroyed, like Junkrat’s.

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I always thought a neat ult for Pharah would be fire-and-forget homing missiles, like ones you could use from behind cover for example.

But I’m a Junkrat main, so I’m biased towards wanting to explode things from behind cover.

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I think that would be cool too! I had the thought after making this post that it would be interesting if she got something akin to Soldier 76’s ult where her primary fire missiles home in on the target closest to her crosshairs when she fired.

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